


Off Stage

by xxbakacoconutxx



Category: Ghost (Sweden Band), Repugnant (Band)
Genre: I just wanted Soft Mary Hours ok?, Other, gender neutral reader, the mood here is that awkward place where you can't decide between cuddles and wanting to fuck lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28345095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxbakacoconutxx/pseuds/xxbakacoconutxx
Summary: Mary is a guy who is very much "on" all the time. He's always putting on some kind of show, with his dramatic makeup and penchant for anarchy. But one day, you catch him just as he is: A dude who really enjoys music and rainy days.
Relationships: Reader/Mary Goore
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33





	Off Stage

**Author's Note:**

> So this idea jumped on me randomly one morning and i had too much fun thinking about it to not write it out. I've gone with second person perspective this time, since it's actually more natural for me and this was a very "stream of thought" kind of thing. Hope you like it!

You catch him off guard. 

You're on your way to your local record store, early afternoon instead of late evening for once. For you, that counts as morning. It’s raining -- that satisfyingly heavy rain with the fat drops that makes huge puddles -- but that doesn't deter you from enjoying yourself. You like the almost warm rain, you like how it drives people off the streets, and you like feeling cozy in your autumn jacket with the hood up. When you step into the store, you take a moment to shake everything off by the door, feeling a bit like a dog coming in from playing in a sprinkler. There were only a couple of people inside, not even a handful, so who cared what they thought? You don't want to get the records wet! It was when you were fluffing the back of your hair that you saw him. You almost don't recognize him without The Face and blood and hair gel, but you recognize the jacket the man essentially lived in. 

Mary Goore is over by the music history books, hair soft and face clean and it was like meeting Dr. Jekyll after only ever knowing there was a Hyde. 

"Mary?" you say, and he startles as you approach. His head snaps up and he closes the book on his thumb, keeping his place. 

"Oh, uh hey," he says, visibly uncomfortable. You know why -- you're not exactly friends, but you run in the same circles, so you've seen him around enough to know that he's literally always "in character". He's always covered in fake blood and face powder, dirt and whatever the brown sludge is on alleyway walls. You've had your suspicions that he was secretly really finicky though. Underneath his nails was always clean, his teeth didn't have that visible layer of plaque that some grimey boys had, and he never smelled like armpits -- cigarettes and beer and weed, yeah, you tended to bump into him in places where those smells were strong, but whenever you stood close to him he just smelled like neutral soap. And now, here he is, scrubbed clean, even in a fresh looking tee under his leather coat, with completely unstained (but still ripped) jeans. 

You chat with him a little, asking him about the book he'd been reading, but while he talks you're looking at his face more than listening to his words. It's a little like trying to imagine someone naked, but the opposite. You're trying to overlay the shadowed, sharp cheekbones you know over the soft curve of his face, the white powder over the impossibility of his blush, trying to correct the soft pink of his lips to the deep burgundy he usually painted them. You had thought he overlined his lips before, to make his singing look more dramatic, but no, apparently the man really did just have really plush, kissable- 

"I wanted to pick this up, but I don't know if its worth forty fucking dollars. I mean, I know a lot of this shit anyway. I just wanted the good juicy bits I might've missed," Mary says, snapping you out of your daydreaming. 

You panic, because you've only been half paying attention so you don't actually know which band the book is about, so you blurt out "I'll buy it for you" without thinking about how weird it would be for an almost stranger to drop forty bucks on someone. Mary is again surprised, and you can see him winding up a declination, so you cut him off. "Help me shop. The book is payment for services rendered," you say, and you hope it comes off as well thought out and confident instead of a flailing attempt to cover your own awkwardness. 

He considers for a moment, before asking, "why do you need my help?" 

"Mmm, most of my music is pretty modern, but I want to get into some older stuff. Learn where it all came from. Figured you'd be the type to know about that," you say, and based on the little smile that quirks in the corner of his mouth, you'd say he was pleased to be stereotyped that way. 

You two drag each other around the store, going through eras and genres and getting off topic often. He speaks to you softly, apparently using his Inside Voice, and the combination of his low rumble and the rhythm of the rain outside almost has you lulling into sleep. It's enough to make you wonder if this soft man is just a dream and you've dozed off in a corner of the store somewhere. You've never heard him like this -- he's usually yelling over the roar of a party, or screaming into a mic -- so to hear him as he leans past you to pick up a record, to hear his soft timber right in your ear is like finally getting to flip a record and finding you like the B sides more. How he is normally is fine -- wild and feral and crass -- but this side felt intimate and rare. The embers of a bonfire that no one ever sticks around to see. 

You realize you want to see this again and again. 

When you check out with five records and his book, he gawks at the price, but you wave him off. You just got paid, the groceries are bought and your bills are taken care of, so you can do what you want. You use the shop's pen to sign their copy of the receipt, and then shift to write your number on your copy. You hand it to him with his book once you're outside, and he furrows his brows at you in confusion. 

"This was a lot of fun," you say, trying to act smooth. You don't give out your number often, but you don't want him to know that. "It'd be nice to do something like this again." 

He stutters a "yeah" back to you before fishing in his pockets for a pen. How he keeps anything in those fucking tight jeans of his, you'll never know, but apparently he manages because he pulls out a chewed bic pen and holds his hand out for you. You put your palm in his and notice he runs cold as he scribbles his number on the back of your hand. His pulse is under your fingertips and you try not to pay too much attention to it. He lets you go and you both say goodbye, and you hadn't even noticed until now that you were still getting rained on. You slip your hand into your pocket to protect his scratchy handwriting. 

Texting bullshit to each other becomes an odd highlight of your day. You'll bitch about customers at your job, and he'll come up with creative ways you should heckle them. You never do, but his suggestions are damn funny. He'll text you at three in the morning just so he can absolutely roast whatever movie he's watching, and he doesn't seem to mind when your replies die out when you fall asleep in the middle. You two don't hang out alone, but you do invite each other to parties and shows and those are the times where you're reminded that you've been treated to something special. 

Tonight was a night like that. Mary's own set was over and he'd joined you in the crowd. He'd jumped and yelled and screamed to the metal blaring through the amps before, but when he gets to you he just throws an arm around your shoulders and sings in your ear. His smile is infectious, even with the paint and the blood, and he looks like he's trying to get you to sing too, but you don't know the words so you just smile back at him and try to hear him through the noise. He's quiet, but the way he's pressed against your side and his cheek is pressed to the side of your head lets you hear his singing voice. You feel like you're being pulled out to sea. 

Later, when the two of you are sitting at the bar three drinks in, he takes to cracking jokes in your ear. He starts off safely over in his space, but as time goes on and the amusing stupidity of the other patrons increases as the crowd's sobriety dwindles, his chair starts scooting closer and closer to yours. You're buzzed enough to think nothing of leaning your head on his shoulder because honestly, you're tired of craning your neck over to him so you can hear his quiet murmur. He pauses in the middle of mocking the "I play guitar" guys chatting up the college girls. He rests his cheek on top of your head and you vaguely wonder if his makeup is going to rub off in your hair. You don't think you really care. Slowly, he puts an arm around you, hand resting respectably at your waist, but still very much on you. You sigh and lean on him a little more as you lapse into a comfortable silence. You reflect again on how this is something special, something rare -- the man usually never shuts the hell up. He says nothing, but rubs his thumb in small circles against your side. 

Someone eventually comes over to talk to him -- he was one of the acts tonight, after all -- but he doesn't move from you. He lifts his head, and he yells over the crowd, but you remain on his shoulder, his arm holding you close. You feel his throat move against your forehead, tendons and muscles flexing as he talks about the show and what his favorite bands are, and you listen to the bass in his voice that others can't hear over the chatter of the bar. He gesticulates with his free hand, and you move with the way it jostles his whole body. There are so many things that people can see, but don't observe about him, and maybe that was the point. The reason he wears his face like armor and covers himself in grime. The reason he growls and screams, but never sings. There are things he wants to protect -- something soft in a very hard world. But he sings for you. He takes sleepy, hungover, five o'clock shadow pics for you with his bare face. He sends you demos he records using his shitty phone mic, and his made up words are funny and sweet and not about necrophilia yet. 

You've never hung out alone, and you've always known why. You've been afraid to step off this precarious ledge. You have a privilege, and you're afraid to lose it if something goes wrong. But you remember the way his cheeks flushed and the way his bangs stuck to the front of his face in the rain as he haphazardly wrote his number on you. The way his eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled, and you could actually see it. The way he looked in the record store that day -- you want to see it again, and without the grainy filter of badly lit cell phone pictures. 

Mary finishes his conversation and returns his cheek to the top of your head. Moments tick by with your eyes closed, and you're pretty sure you can hear his heartbeat in your ear. You're tired of being pretty sure. You want to hear him. See him. You want him to show you more of his secret tenderness, and you want him to know you're paying attention. You move your head to press a kiss behind his ear. His breath hitches and it does something to you -- enough to urge you on. For once, you're the one in his ear as you say, "Come home with me." 

He stays quiet for a moment, and you'd be worried if it weren't for his thumb still making patterns against your shirt. "You've been drinking though," he says, but he's turned his head to press the words directly into your hair and you can feel the kiss he drops there after. 

"Not that much. If we walk, I'll be sober by the time we get there," you say, and it's true. You just hope he believes you. You think to ask, "What about you?" 

"M'already good. Talking to that guy killed my buzz," he says, squeezing you against him. He takes another moment, breath warm against your hair and you relish in the consideration. You've seen him run out of bars with people before to go dive into bed with them, so you preen at how heavily he seems to weigh this moment. You don't even feel nervous, the possibility of rejection far away. As scary as it is, this has been a long time coming -- as inevitable as death and as natural as gravity. With another kiss to your head, he finally says, "Yeah, ok. Let's go." 

You lift your head and look him in the eyes, rimmed with black. You follow the trail of fake blood over them, down his cheek to where it ran into the corner of his painted mouth. You want to kiss his lipstick off, pull at his mouth with your teeth, steal his breath from him when you suck his bottom lip between yours. So you do. You don't wait until you're outside -- you don't wait until you've paid your tab. You kiss him right there in front of his crowd, his people, his bar, and he makes a noise against you that sounds like he's finally slipping into a hot bath after a long day. You run your hand through his hair, and no that's wrong. You don't want the crusty feeling of his gel. You don't want your hand to come away with flakes of red stuck to it. You pull away from him to see the way his eyes sparkle, and you need so badly to see the blush you know is hiding under his powder. You pull some bills from your pocket and slap them on the bar, tugging at his arm to get him to stand. "Bu- wait, you don't have to pay for me," he protests. 

"Don't care, we need to get the fuck out of here," you say and you've caught him off guard again. It's maybe your favorite thing. He's surprised, but a smirk is slinking up his face. He shrugs his coat on and watches as you get your shit together, eyes reminding you of a cat stalking a mouse. You grab his arm and pull him through the crowd, going quickly and bursting through the side door out into the frigid air. You both giggle as you keep pulling him along, but you're privately laughing at him for thinking you're the prey in this situation. You lead him into the night, feeling bright as the stars -- like you could jump and catch the tip of the moon. You don't think of the morning, of how awkward or how lovely it could be. You don't think of your body or any of your insecurities. You just think of his calloused hand in yours, and of the breathless joy it brings.


End file.
